Top 50: Eli Whitney and other inventors are made in New Haven

The grave marker of Eli Whitney at the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven.

The grave marker of Eli Whitney at the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven.

Photo: Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media File Photo

Photo: Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media File Photo

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The grave marker of Eli Whitney at the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven.

The grave marker of Eli Whitney at the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven.

Photo: Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media File Photo

Top 50: Eli Whitney and other inventors are made in New Haven

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Editor’s note: This is the 44th story in the Register’s Top 50 series.

Countless products, ideas and works of art have been produced in New Haven and by its sons and daughters. Inventors in New Haven have contributed to the growth of industries such as manufacturing, textiles, food, automobiles and others.

The culture of innovation is connected with one of the area’s most famous and influential residents—Eli Whitney. His inventions, born out of need, shaped history in ways the inventor could not anticipate. He is integrally tied with the history and economic development of New Haven, with a section of town, a school and a main thoroughfare being named for this man.

“Was New Haven a particularly innovative place? I would argue that it was,” said Bill Brown, director of the Eli Whitney Museum. “It was connected to Eli Whitney. ... The way that people worked here, it had a powerful contribution to their lives.”

An inventor is made

Born in Massachusetts to a farmer, Whitney didn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps, so at 23 he attended Yale University to study law. But after graduation he still hadn’t found his calling and, eager to establish himself, took a tutoring position in South Carolina that promised good pay, according to the museum. On his trip south, Whitney found out his agreed-upon salary was to be halved and refused the job, instead taking an job offer from a woman he was traveling with who was a widow of a Revolutionary War general. She invited Whitney to stay at her plantation in Georgia.

It was there in Georgia that Whitney invented the machine for which he is most famous, one that changed the southern and northern economies dramatically — the cotton gin. The device produced more cotton in an hour than what could be produced by multiple workers in a day. Whitney planned to install his machine on plantations throughout the South and collecting a portion of the profits, the museum’s history recounts.

“By the time he’d put a patent on it, it was too late,” said Jason Bischoff-Wurstle, director of photo archives at the New Haven Museum. Whitney’s machine had been copied by farmers all over by the time he was awarded a patent in 1794. “He was caught up in litigation and overall he didn’t really make a profit from the cotton gin. But as we know, it became arguably the most revolutionary invention in American history. It helped establish America as it was at that point.”

Southern planters reaped financial windfalls from the invention while Whitney made almost no profit, even after he received monetary settlements from some states. While the cotton business boomed, it made keeping people enslaved a more viable business model. Whitney didn’t intend for his invention to propel slavery, but it made the cotton business more efficient and, in turn, profitable, Bischoff-Wurstle said. Whitney saw his invention as something beneficial for farmers and thought it would replace the need for slaves.

“He imagined cotton picking was difficult by hand and it would eventually be replaced by a machine,” Brown said. “People were solving problems everywhere, but he didn’t imagine slavery would go on for 100 years.”

“More than any other one man, he shaped the opposing faces of both the North and South for a half-century to come,” according to the Eli Whitney Muesum website. But Whitney didn’t live long enough to see the start of the Civil War. He died in 1825.

“Having slaves was not efficient,” Bischoff-Wurstle said. “His outlook was that this would make more sense and it would be better for people. You could just make this machine and have less people and be better off. It was around the time slavery was slowing down, but it had an inverse effect. The cotton gin made slavery more viable.”

“His motivation was to establish himself,” Brown said. But never able to do that with the cotton gin, he returned to New Haven, resolving to start over.

Whitney’s factory

Unsure of what to do, Whitney was fortunate enough to have been noticed by Thomas Jefferson, who wanted America to produce its own arms. In June 1798, Whitney signed a contract with the government to produce 10,000 muskets in two years, according to the museum. In doing so, he became America’s first arms dealer. Whitney was not an experienced gunmaker but had the idea to make all parts of a musket interchangeable in the field. To accomplish it, though, he would have to create a system of manufacturing each part to the same specifications.

At the time, muskets were built by individual craftsmen, with each weapon having a unique design, and Whitney faced a shortage of skilled and affordable craftsman to fulfill the contract, according to the museum. Pushed by necessity, he created tools that would to ease the skill required of workers.

“If you’re going to have 65 people collaborate, they’re going to have to have tools to guide their work, so that person can deliver it with accuracy,” Brown said. For each part of the gun, a template was made, so a worker could follow the pattern in cutting a piece of metal. Each worker only needed to master making a few parts.

“He did not know at first in which direction to go, but he was about to enter the less celebrated but most fruitful time of his life; and just as he had changed the face of the South, he was now about to mold the face of the North into a form it has kept ever since,” according to the museum website. “He was to lay the foundation and invent the techniques for what has become known as the ‘American System of Manufacture.’”

He built his factory at the border of Hamden and New Haven where he was able to harness water to power the milling machines used to create the parts. This area became known as Whitneyville as people came to live around the factory where they worked. It became a quintessential picture of where people lived while they were learning trades in the factory, Brown said. Neighborhoods that surround factories are replicated all around New Haven now.

The Industrial Revolution had begun in England, but Whitney’s factory marked the beginnings of the American Industrial Revolution. Both the cotton gin and system of interchangeable parts were early drivers of industry in America.

“We celebrate Henry Ford for creating assembly and mass production, but really Eli Whitney came up with that—Ford sped things up 100 years later,” Bischoff-Wurstle said. “Whitney added to this notion of fast moving, that Americans can move at a quicker rate and get things done, mixed with their Protestant notion that we had to keep working.”

Whitney invented out of need. He took the contract with the government because he was looking for a way to establish himself and invented a new method of manufacturing to fulfill that contract. His system of interchangeable parts wasn’t as important to him as the tools he fashioned to make those parts, Brown said. This work strategy shaped manufacturing in the 19th century.

“In doing so he created the new American era of industry between the gin and the uniformity system he created,” Bischoff-Wurstle said. “At the beginning of the 19th century, he put America on the map as this brand new tech visionary with what he was doing.”

“That toolmaking business, Whitney realized, was the essence of his work here,” Brown said. “Once you learn the power to make things in industrial fashion, a product of your ability to make tools, you have a new technical language. You have tools to make anything — make guns, clocks, or make hardware. You begin to develop this set of universal skills.”

By 1808 Whitney realized his factory was also a type of school that produced a new kind of worker, Brown said.

Inspiring other makers

Whitney inspired a culture of problem-solving in New Haven. His armory was relatively small, particularly in the time he was alive, with only 65 workers, but it produced people that were part of a geometric growth of industry in the area. As he employed more people, he taught them how to build and create and became a figurehead for innovation.

“He was seen as this new American leader, embodied that new American spirit that people were celebrating,” Bischoff-Wurstle said. “His inventions pushed the barriers and continued through his family.”

Recently incorporated as a city in 1784, New Haven was becoming a place where people saw and emulated workers who were able to master production, Brown said. “Developing a capacity to make things builds on itself and is what the Industrial Revolution is about.” The Industrial Revolution came out of solving problems, he said, and after Whitney’s development of tools, factories could get a worker who could use tools that produced efficiency.

His factory, along with the lively clock-making and brass hardware sectors, contributed early on to making the state a powerful manufacturing economy. It became known as the “arsenal of America” because so many arms manufacturers took root in New Haven, Brown said. The factory stayed in business for 80 years, with Whitney’s nephews and, later, son, Eli Whitney Jr., running the business after his father died. It was in his factory that Samuel Colt — inventor of the automatic revolver — manufactured his first pistol in 1846.

“There was this remarkable proliferation,” Brown said of the number of factories to spring up after Whitney’s did.

Many other machinists and firearms designers would go on to establish successful firearms manufacturing companies in New Haven, including Oliver Winchester, who eventually bought the Whitney Armory and established the Winchester Arms Co., which became one of New Haven’s largest employers.

“His legacy has such a strength to it,” Bischoff-Wurstle said. “Locally, his legacy intertwined with the development of the community. His family added to that legacy and created their own, as well.”

The factory is now the Eli Whitney Museum, which emphasizes hands-on learning for children. Brown said the museum identifies projects for kids who want to learn differently and want to move while they work instead of sitting down all the time.

“At the museum, we think the lesson to be observed in Whitney’s process is the workplace was a powerful educating place,” Brown said. “We argue, as Whitney did, that schooling with paper in front of you is learning but not equal to education.”

More innovation

There are dozens of other people either born in the New Haven area or who lived here later in their lives who can be credited with many well-known innovative creations. Landmark items such as America’s first national currency, the first telephone company, and toy construction set can all be linked with the city.

George Coy, who lived in Milford and worked in New Haven, is known as the inventor of the first commercial telephone exchange. Coy was inspired by a talk Alexander Graham Bell gave in 1877 when he came to New Haven to demonstrate the telephone, which he had invented the prior year, so Coy started researching the commercial application of Bell’s invention. He started the first telephone company, The District Telephone Co., in 1878, run out of a small, rented office in the Boardman Building at the corner of Chapel and State streets in New Haven. Coy served as secretary and superintendent of the company and the first switchboard was built according to Coy’s design.

The famous lexicographer Noah Webster attended Yale and lived in New Haven where he published his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, in 1801 and began writing the well-known expanded version, An American Dictionary of the English Language. Webster was the first person to define the words Americans use as a way to unify the country and distinguish itself from England. It took Webster 22 years to complete this feat.

It was a New Haven son, Charles Goodyear, who, around 1884, invented vulcanized rubber, which involves mixing natural rubber with additives such as sulfur and other curatives to make rubber stronger, more flexible and more resistant to heat and other environmental conditions. The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. is named after him. He is buried in the Grove Street Cemetery.

Whitney’s own legacy of innovation continued directly through his family line. His nephews — Eli Whitney Blake and Philos Blake — are to thank for the invention of the stone crusher and corkscrew, respectively. At the time, workers used hand hammers to crush stones used to build roads, but Eli Blake solved this costly and labor-intensive problem by mechanical means with his steam-powered stone crusher. They also were awarded the first patent for a furniture caster, among others for locks and latches. The Blake brothers had gained invaluable civil and mechanical engineering skills working in their uncle’s arms factory, which they continued to run for 10 years after Whitney’s death.

“Just in the family you get this evolution into different realms of technology and innovation,” Brown said. “It connects his legacy in a pure way. He invested in them and they went off to create success in their own right.”

New Haven also claims certain food inventions, such as the hamburger and the lollipop.

Modern inventors

Whitney’s and others’ innovative spirits live on in New Haven and remain part of the city’s culture that allows entrepreneurship to grow in many realms. In the last few decades, there has been a revolution of products, Brown said. He pointed no further than the community workshop MakeHaven to find modern inventors.

“We keep pretending that making and inventing is in the world of factories, it’s complete nonsense. Making things is human impulse and it will eventually influence our ways of doing things,” Brown said. “The spirit that was here in (Whitney’s) time is resurrected in MakeHaven and adults saying that in spite of the bias of being an artisan, ‘I’m going to do that.’ It’s absolutely important because that’s how people are made. We too narrowly define education and don’t honor people who make things.”